


Save It for the Outtakes (They're Some of Our Best Work)

by Anonymous



Category: British Actor RPF, Good Omens (TV) RPF
Genre: Interviews, Late-Night Shows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-26
Updated: 2019-10-26
Packaged: 2021-01-03 16:56:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21182822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Two interviews that never happened about DVD bonus content that (probably) doesn't exist.Approximately as shippy as real life.





	Save It for the Outtakes (They're Some of Our Best Work)

**Author's Note:**

> None of this ever happened.
> 
> Warning for talk about sexual harassment.

####  A Generic Late Night Show, The Guest Interview (XX/XX/2019)

#### TRANSCRIPT

HOST: (grinning) Now – and I think it’s our duty to address this – there were some rumors that you got into a bit of trouble for, how should I put this, getting a bit too close to one of your co-stars in this, Michael Sheen, in one scene. So tell us about that, what’s the story there?

DAVID TENNANT: Well, I would like to clarify that the rumors were wildly exaggerated and to not reflect– (laughs) (to the audience) I can see you all getting tense. It’s all fine, I promise. It’s a funny story, or he (points at Host) wouldn’t be bringing it up.

HOST: (looks around and behind him for another person)

DAVID TENNANT: So, right, in Good Omens, Michael Sheen and I play a sort of fantastical odd couple. He’s an angel and I’m a demon, and we have to team up to save the world from our respective head offices, because they think it’s time for, for Armageddon.

HOST: Your typical buddy comedy.

DAVID TENNANT: Oh, absolutely. Because, you know, they’re supposed to be absolute enemies, but over the, the millennia they spend together on earth, they discover they’ve just got a lot more in common than apart. And so over time they become friends and really, in a way, grow to love each other. Even if they would never admit it.

HOST: Aww.

DAVID TENNANT: And the way it’s done in the show, it’s very much a love story that you, and the viewers, get to see develop over the years, but it’s sort of, ah… left open what _kind_ of love story it is. It could be romantic, or it could be platonic, there’s nothing really definite to, well, define it on the show.

HOST: It’s Schroedinger’s romance.

DAVID TENNANT: That’s, yes, I think that’s a good way to put it.

HOST: I still want to know how you got from that to you and Michael Sheen in a compromising situation.

DAVID TENNANT: Well, so Michael and I were thinking, you know, the relationship works really well on the show as it is, but wouldn’t it be fun, for the people who like the romantic interpretation, if somewhere, on the DVD extras or one of those places, we could have the two kiss.

HOST: That’d certainly have the DVDs flying off the shelves! Or the Amazon virtual whatevers.

DAVID TENNANT: Exactly, exactly. So we thought, well, there’s this scene coming up that’ll give us a good opportunity, so why not have a go at it. Let’s try to get a kiss on camera. And on the day everything’s going great on set, we’re doing fine, you know, time-wise, we can afford to play around a bit. So on one take I, as Crowley - the demon – just shove Michael up against a wall and kiss him. And Michael, as Aziraphale, reacts somewhat surprised–

HOST: Like you would if a demon suddenly kissed you–

DAVID TENNANT: Yes, but, to be clear, not like it’s a _bad_ surprise.

HOST: Of course, of course.

DAVID TENNANT: And so we do that, and then I turn around, wink at the camera (he turns to the camera and demonstrates, winking exaggeratedly) and go ‘That one’s for the outtakes!’ And then we cut, and went on as normal, and that was that. Or so we _thought_.

HOST: This is where the trouble comes in. I can smell it.

DAVID TENNANT: Well, the next day I was asked very politely to come in and have a chat with the, well, essentially HR.

HOST: That’s when you know you’re in trouble. That’s when you know you’ve really (bleep)ed up.

DAVID TENNANT: But the thing is – and you might not believe me, but it’s honestly completely true – it didn’t occur to me, not for a moment, that it might be about the, the outtakes thing. I just had absolutely no idea what was going on.

HOST: Because – for anyone who might not know this – it’s not unusual at all to mess around a bit on set, is it?

DAVID TENNANT: Well, exactly. I mean, you do have a shooting schedule, and you can’t go around causing huge delays, but you do always do multiple takes of every scene. And sometimes someone messes up, or has a laugh, and that’s all very normal.

HOST: That’s how you get all those fun blooper reels on your DVDs!

DAVID TENNANT: Exactly. So I, at the time, have no idea why I’m being summoned. And I’m imagining all kinds of things! Like, did the production run out of money and it’s all being shut down? Or, or have they finally realized what a terrible mistake they made hiring me, and they’re going to replace me with a proper actor?

HOST: You can’t actually have thought that. You’re _David Tennant_!

DAVID TENNANT: I mean, well, it’s the sort of thing that goes through your head, isn’t it? You know, I’m in trouble and I don’t know what for, so what are _all_ the possible things I might have cocked up… But, so, I go in and I meet with this very nice woman who’s being very carefully nonconfrontational about telling me how important it is on a set like this to be respectful and careful of other people’s boundaries. And how even if something seems like a harmless joke to me, it might make someone else uncomfortable.

HOST: I think I’m starting to see where this is going.

DAVID TENNANT: Believe it or not, I wasn’t. At that point I was sort of frantically running, in my head, through a list of women, or anyone, I’d spoken to on set and just sort of desperately trying to remember if I’d said something that could’ve come across wrong? Like, I was thinking, ‘I said (makes mumbling sounds) to (makes mumbling sounds again), but what if she heart (mumbling)’–

(Audience laughs)

DAVID TENNANT: You’re laughing now, but I was so serious!

HOST: Well, don’t keep us in suspense!

David Tennent: Well, eventually she finally mentions – still being very nice and understanding and all that – that simply grabbing and kissing people who haven’t agreed to that isn’t okay. And it finally clicks and I go ‘Wait, is this about that scene Michael and I did yesterday?’ And it turns out it is. Because here’s the thing that we didn’t– that I never stopped to consider: Michael is a very good actor. He’s really very convincing in, well, everything he plays. So when he reacted, in character, sort of shocked and stunned, and because we hadn’t told anyone what we were doing, it looked to everyone like I had just grabbed him and k- snogged him out of the blue!

HOST: Very much never a good thing. But wouldn’t it have been clear once the scene was over and you’d, uh, released him, so to speak, that he was fine with it?

DAVID TENNANT: I don’t know? I mean, I thought so, I guess, if I thought about it at all. We just laughed and moved on. But that is sort of also what you’d do if one of your mates suddenly sprung a, an uncomfortable joke on you in public, isn’t it?

HOST: I guess I can see where they were coming from, yeah. So were you actually in trouble there for a while?

DAVID TENNANT: Well, at the time I was sort of panicking, thinking, you know, _I_ know that Michael and I talked about, planned this, sort of, but they have absolutely no reason to believe me when I say that. That just sounds like the worst, the most unimaginative kind of excuse, doesn’t it? But of course I didn’t have anything else I could say, so I did say that.

HOST: Couldn’t they just check with Michael Sheen if you were telling the truth?

DAVID TENNANT: Of course, yes, and obviously that’s what they did do. But of course I was a bit worried about that, too, like they might think I’d just talked him into covering for me, or something. So, yeah, I was really worrying, thinking maybe I should avoid talking to him at all so it doesn’t look like we’re getting our stories straight?

HOST: (raising his eyebrows) You didn’t let him know at all that this was happening?

DAVID TENNANT: Oh no, I did. Not because I thought it would be fine, or the right idea or anything, but just because I really didn’t want to be alone in this.

HOST: And did that end up being a problem?

DAVID TENNANT: No, not at all. You have to understand, at least eighty percent of the, the drama here was only happening in my head. Not in reality. In the end they just talked to Michael, and he told them that yeah, we planned the thing, the kiss, and they believed him. So we kind of looked like prats, but other than that, everything was fine.

HOST: They didn’t make you sit through a seminar on harassment in the workplace or anything like that?

DAVID TENNANT: No, no, everyone was very decent about it. More than decent, they even apologized to us, which we really didn’t deserve.

HOST: And that was the end of it for you?

DAVID TENNANT: Well, the end of me worrying about getting fired, thank goodness.

HOST: But?

DAVID TENNANT: How much time have we got left?

HOST: Oh, this is all going in the extended version online. We definitely have a few more minutes we need to fill there. So you can keep talking, or I can start asking you what it was like playing Doctor Who.

DAVID TENNANT: Well. After all that, Michael and I were kind of thinking, after all this they’re probably not going to put that on the DVD extras, are they? It’s the sort of thing that – rightfully, I should say – everyone gets very cautious about. But in this case it was just, well, unfortunate.

HOST: You were that committed to getting that kiss on the DVDs?

DAVID TENNANT: Well, we do make money from the DVD sales.

HOST: Oh, of course, it’s all about that extra ka-ching.

DAVID TENNANT: Of course, always. So we were trying to think of what we should do.

HOST: You didn’t know anyone at the BBC you could slip a few Benjamins to? Or are you above that kind of bribery?

DAVID TENNANT: Oh, definitely not. And even if I was, I don’t think Michael would be. (laughs) But we’re just actors, we don’t actually know how this gets put together. We just show up, say our lines, and go home. We have no idea who does the actual work, or who’s in charge of what. So, you know, we would have had to start trying to bribe people sort of at random, just staking stabs in the dark and hoping to find the right person.

HOST: And then you reach the point where you’re just bribing people to pretend you didn’t try to bribe them, and that’s when it all really starts going to hell.

DAVID TENNANT: I mean, at that point, you have to admit, that’s, it just becomes inefficient.

HOST: Very true, very true. So what did you do, then?

DAVID TENNANT: Well, we thought, let’s just, let’s take another scene, and do another kiss. And make absolutely sure there’s no misunderstanding or problem or anything like that this time. And then hopefully they’ll put that one on the DVDs, at least.

HOST: So how did you do that, then? Did you draw up a contract? Hold up a sign saying ‘this is one hundred percent consensual’?

DAVID TENNANT: (laughs) No, not, not quite, but we did take the director aside and say, listen, after this scene, don’t call cut right away, we want to try something, play with it a bit.

HOST: And he didn’t ask you what?

DAVID TENNANT: I think he had a pretty good idea. I don’t think we were being particularly subtle about it.

HOST: Well, you wouldn’t want to be, would you?

DAVID TENNANT: No, exactly. Well, so, we do the scene, and then at the end, instead of finishing up like we’re supposed to, we gaze very gently and lovingly into each other’s eyes and sloooowly lean in… just the most romantic – and definitely consensual – thing you can imagine.

(Audience cheers)

DAVID TENNANT: Thank you, yes, thank you. And so we kiss, and it’s very lovely, and the director is _maybe_ rolling his eyes at us a little bit, but it’s all fine.

HOST: And you get away with it this time, neither of you gets summoned to HR?

DAVID TENNANT: Correct.

HOST: A happy ending then! So can we look forward to seeing this kiss on the DVD extras then when they come out?

DAVID TENNANT: I hope so? But I have no idea, honestly.

HOST: I mean, given what you went through to make this happen, that’s really the least they could do, isn’t it?

DAVID TENNANT: All that trauma, yes, clearly.

HOST: And I bet a lot of fans would be _very_ happy to get to see that kiss, (turns to audience) am I right?

(Audience cheers loudly)

HOST: You know what? Let’s make this happen! It’s the will of the people. (to David Tennant) Who can people tweet to say they want to see that kiss on the DVDs? And Blu-rays, let’s not forget Blu-rays. Who can we tweetstorm?

DAVID TENNANT: I, you, I honestly don’t know? And to be honest, I’m a little worried about the, the power you’re trying to unleash here.

HOST: And rightly so! But we’re using to for good, clearly we’re only using to for good. It’s and Amazon and BBC show, right?

DAVID TENNANT: (nods)

HOST: (to the audience) So go forth and tweet Amazon! And the BBC! And whoever else is involved, you can figure that out, I’m sure. Make it storm tweets! Let them know you want to see that kiss!

(Audience cheers loudly)

HOST: (turns back to David Tennant) There you go, that should do it.

DAVID TENNANT: (laughing) We can but hope.

* * *

####  A (Different) Generic Late Night Show, The Guest Interview (XX/XX/2019)

#### TRANSCRIPT

HOST: Now, let’s talk about this, you posted this picture to twitter a few days ago. That’s you and David Tennant, as your characters from Good Omens (shows the picture: Aziraphale and Crowley sitting next to each other on a park bench, both leaning in and clearly about to kiss) but that’s not a moment from the show, is it? That’s not canon.

MICHAEL SHEEN: (laughs) No, that’s definitely not canon.

HOST: So do you want to tell us a bit about that?

MICHAEL SHEEN: Well, in Good Omens, for anyone who doesn’t know, David Tennant and I play an angel and a demon who end up having to save the world together, more or less. Because they’ve both been on Earth since the Garden of Eden, and over the millennia they’ve spent there, they’ve sort of come to realize that they have more in common with the humans and with each other than with their respective head offices. So when it comes time for the apocalypse, they decide to team up and try to stop it. And it’s a story about free will, and humanity, and standing up and fighting for the essential things that we all share, but it’s also, at least on a kind of subtextual level, if you will, a love story between this angel and this demon.

HOST: Right, right.

MICHAEL SHEEN: And in the show, it’s very… very open, it’s left up to the viewer to decide, to interpret what kind of love that is, and in that context that works really beautifully, I think.

HOST: (motioning to the picture) This doesn’t look all that open to interpretation.

MICHAEL SHEEN: Well, no. That’s why it’s not from the show.

HOST: So, just something you decided to do in your free time?

MICHAEL SHEEN: Essentially, yes. (laughs) No, well, we – David Tennant and I – happened to be thinking, wouldn’t it be fun to include a kiss between our characters on the DVD extras somewhere? Just as a nice bonus for the fans, and everyone who might have been hoping to see that.

HOST: Including yourself?

MICHAEL SHEEN: Oh, definitely.

HOST: So was that your idea, or David Tennant’s? Be honest now!

MICHAEL SHEEN: (laughs) Well. David was the one who asked me if I might be interested in trying to get a kiss into the outtakes somewhere. But I’m fairly sure he was just taking pity on me because I was thinking it so loudly.

HOST: You were that invested in these characters? Or were you just thinking ‘I’d quite fancy a snog with David Tennant’?

MICHAEL SHEEN: I mean, who wouldn’t? (grins)

(Audience laughs/cheers, one person wolf-whistles)

MICHAEL SHEEN: But yeah, no, I really was thinking about our characters and about this love story, this, well, really this romance that we were playing, and how for the people who do read it that way–

HOST: And a _lot_ of people do! I’ve been on the internet, I’ve seen this.

MICHAEL SHEEN: And I’m probably one of them. So I was thinking it would just be nice to have a kiss there, somewhere, sort of a thing you can imagine took place in a slightly alternate universe, if you want to.

HOST: You were thinking it, but you didn’t say anything?

MICHAEL SHEEN: Well, it was still fairly early in the filming process, you know. David and I hadn’t been working together that long yet, and, I mean, even in a world like acting – or possibly especially there – asking your coworkers to kiss you for, let’s call them _debatable_ reasons, can come off as a bit _weird_. Or worse. So I thought, well, maybe let’s hold off on that just a bit.

HOST: And while you were still working up the courage to ask, he beat you to it?

MICHAEL SHEEN: (laughs) Pretty much!

HOST: But then you both ended up in a bit of trouble over that somehow anyway, didn’t you? Or was that just a rumor?

MICHAEL SHEEN: No, that was– Well, okay. So. We had two goes at it. That (gestures at the picture) is from our second one, and that was al fine. It was on the first try that we accidentally almost caused some, some problems. Because, well, basically there’s a scene where David, as the demon Crowley, has to pin me up against a wall. And in one of the takes – like we decided we would do – instead of doing his whole rant there, he kissed me, kissed Aziraphale. And we thought, good, okay, that’s on film now, that’s all we wanted, and we moved on.

HOST: But…?

MICHAEL SHEEN: But then the next day, David got called in to, to our HR department, because they thought – because it must have sort of looked like that from the outside – that he had just improvised all that, you know, without asking me. And he hadn’t, of course! But nobody but us knew that. We hadn’t told anyone.

HOST: I see. That does look bad, from a certain angle. So were you in serious trouble, were you worried?

MICHAEL SHEEN: I think David was genuinely worried they were going to fire him. I mean, they obviously weren’t, but in a situation like that, of course you’re a bit nervous. Of course you are. So, yes. But, an I should be clear about this, in the end it was all completely fine. I just went in and told them that yes, I’d been in on it, and that it had all been completely planned and consensual and all that, an they believed me. And that was the end of it.

HOST: So were you then a bit annoyed that you’d had to go through all that drama when really there’d been nothing wrong?

MICHAEL SHEEN: We were both more embarrassed than anything else, I think, to be honest.

HOST: Really? How come?

MICHAEL SHEEN: Well, I mean, the thing is, we’d, in a way, just been thinking of ourselves and our, our own point of view. We just thought, this’ll be fun, so let’s do it. We didn’t stop to think how it might look to other people, how it might affect them, beyond the pragmatic. We never considered that someone might think it was unplanned because _we_ knew that that’s something we wouldn’t do. And it’s like, okay, _I_ know that David Tennant doesn’t go around just– sexually assaulting his coworkers, and _he_ knows that, but that’s not enough. We can’t expect everyone else – people who have no reason to trust us, who don’t know us – to know that, or to take our word for it. So that was a bit of a learning experience for both of us there, I think. And I think, I hope, that we’re better for it, a bit.

HOST: I’m sure you are. But, so, then how did you get from there to (gestures at the photo) here? Were you just like, okay, that didn’t go so great, let’s have a do-over?

MICHAEL SHEEN: (laughs) Basically, yes. We thought we’d have another crack at it, and try to, to do better this time. So we picked a better scene, and we had a quiet word with the director beforehand, to let him know, and then when the time came, we did a sort of slow, careful lean-in, lots of eye contact, just as romantic as we could possibly make it, so that when we finally kiss it’s as clear as it can be that we both absolutely meant to do that. And in the end I think that also served the characters and the, the sort of moment we were going for better, so that was nice.

HOST: And that version is going to be on the DVD outtakes now?

MICHAEL SHEEN: I don’t know! I’m not consulted on these things. But I certainly hope so.

HOST: You’re not the only one. Good Omens fans have ben tweeting quite a lot about this. They even made a hashtag trend and everything.

MICHAEL SHEEN: Clearly the BBC should give the people what they want!

HOST: But we don’t know if they will?

MICHAEL SHEEN: We just don’t know.

HOST: If they don’t, can we count on you to leak the footage on twitter?

MICHAEL SHEEN: (laughs) I don’t have it! Our wonderful set photographer was kind enough to send me this picture, but that’s all I have. I’m one of the people here.

HOST: Well, in that case, how about if the kiss isn’t on the DVDs, you and David Tennant come back here on this show and act it out live for our audience? (turns to the audience) You’d like that, right?

(Audience cheers loudly)

HOST: (turns back to Michael Sheen) Would you be up for that?

MICHAEL SHEEN: Oh, absolutely!

(Audience cheers)

HOST: There you go! We’ll just have to make sure to get some sexual harassment waivers drawn up, or something like that. We’ll get some lawyers in, they’ll work it out. No offense, just for insurance reasons, you understand.

MICHAEL SHEEN: Listen, I’m happy to go on the record right now as a very consenting party. David Tennant can kiss me anytime, any place. No waivers needed!

HOST: Okay then! (turns to face the camera) David Tennant, I’m sure you’re watching, so consider yourself, uh… invited? Challenged?

MICHAEL SHEEN: I like ‘challenged.’

HOST: Challenged! In the meantime, Good Omens will be out on DVD and Blu-ray next week. Go preorder it now, you never know, the kiss might be on there!

MICHAEL SHEEN: And if it’s not, keep an eye on this show. (winks at the camera)

**Author's Note:**

> Please don't share this fic outside fannish spaces. Thank you.


End file.
